Process Breakdown
My motivators for this piece were that I'm a big Charli XCX fan and every motion designer seems to use that squash & stretch text effect. I think the beauty of this project was that it was a gentle reminder that there are so many ways to execute the same idea. I was introduced to this text effect through my Pinterest feed because it was basically in every other motion graphics post. Since it seemed to be a staple in the motion design community, I wanted to try and recreate it myself. While my initial assumption was that this could be created by turning off proportional scaling and keyframing the different characters, I learned to use the Grid effect through Masd*Lab's tutorial on Youtube.
Having completed this project now, I think my original assumption still stands true. Now, even if different methods can give you the same results, it's still important to reflect on which is more efficient. My verdict is that designers will have their grievances with either method. If I used the scaling method, I would've had to spend time moving the anchor point on each character to vary the direction it scaled from. When I used the grid method, it was tedious to constantly have to reselect which points I wanted to alter in the grid.
The good news is that both techniques would cost you about the same amount of time and exertion. The even better news is that there's probably a more effective method out there that I'm yet to discover.